Data processing systems have one or more buses that function as a communication highway for the system. The one or more buses function to transfer address, data and/or control information during time periods defined by clock cycles.
Typical data processing systems use a technique known as a direct memory access (DMA). Using direct memory access, information can be directly transferred between input/output devices and a memory with only minimal involvement by a central processing-unit (CPU). Thus a DMA controller functions to transfer a stream of information from a source in a data processing system to a destination.
The complexity of DMA controllers as well as their speed has dramatically increased during the last decades. Testing DMA controllers can be a long and tedious process that requires multiple dedicated test pins.
There is a growing need to simplify the testing of DMA controllers.